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Thursday, 14 February 2013

Red Dwarf Retrospective 1

SERIES I - 1988

The End * Future Echoes * Balance of Power * Waiting for God

Confidence and Paranoia * Me^2

Twenty-five years ago, on the fifteenth of February, 1988, Red Dwarf made its debut on BBC2, having
spent five years being rejected by the powers that be. British television
wasn’t really going in for science fiction in those days. Doctor Who was almost at its end, there were a few children’s
shows, and some American imports were on their way over, but that was about it.
Cinema was full of it, but TV? The prevailing attitude at the BBC was that
sci-fi was a dying genre, and sci-fi comedy was a sure-fire road to failure.
Yet Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, and their champion, agent and producer, Paul
Jackson, managed to get the damned thing greenlit. Even then, it was almost
scuppered by electrician strikes. It’s a miracle it ever got made at all.

The cast weren’t who the writers had originally envisioned;
we’ve all heard the stories of Alan Rickman and Alfred Molina auditioning,
bringing to mind some strange parallel world where they have just starred in Red Dwarf X while Craig Charles and
Chris Barrie are critically acclaimed movie stars. The four main characters
ended up played by an impressionist, a stand-up comedian, a dancer and a poet
with no prior acting experience. The show was tragically cheap, sets painted in
a dowdy uniform grey that made the khaki uniforms look vivid. It was slow,
strange and clearly an anomaly in the BBC’s evening schedules. It was also an
instant hit.

It was years before I saw the first two series of the show.
I came to Red Dwarf with series six,
and the repeats I saw were mostly from later series. Videos from the third
series onwards were pretty easy to find, but the earliest volumes, which were
actually released later, were harder to track down. Perhaps they weren’t
expected to sell so well. It’s true that, coming to the opening episodes from
this perspective, there is a marked difference in tone and production style.
There’s a gentler pace, with more emphasis on character than madcap ideas and
spectacle. This is something the series never completely let go of, but in these
early days Red Dwarf was very much a
sitcom set in space, and not, as it later became, a sci-fi series with jokes.
These may sound the same, but the difference is clear to anyone who watches,
say, an episode from the first series followed by one from the fifth.

That’s not to say the show wasn’t high concept, though. A
vast mining ship slowly cruising through the solar system; stasis booths that
freeze people in time as punishment for infringing ship regulations; the
extinction of the human race but for one unworthy survivor; people resurrected
as holograms, unable to touch the world around them; a man descended from cats;
breaking the light speed barrier and catching up with the future; living
hallucinations and the manifestations of Confidence and Paranoia… There were
certainly plenty of sci-fi ideas, many of them wholly original.

At the heart of it though, Red Dwarf stuck to a simple sitcom formula: two dysfunctional
blokes who can’t stand each other, trapped together. An inveterate snob and an
incurable slob, with nothing to keep them going through the mindless drudgery
of their lives but their own animosity. Sure, we also had Danny John-Jules as
the living embodiment of feline nature, Norman Lovett at his deadpan best as
the ship’s computer Holly, and occasional star spots from Mac MacDonald, Claire
Grogan and Mark Williams (surely now the most famous actor from those early
days, although Craig ‘Confidence’ Ferguson probably eclipses him in the
States). But at the heart of it, underneath the weirdness, the one-liners and
the futuristic profanities, Red Dwarf was
about two lowly vending machine maintenance men who absolutely, positively,
couldn’t smegging stand each other. For that, and the show’s success, we have
to thank not only Grant and Naylor, but Chris Barrie and Craig Charles. The
smegheads.

3 comments:

I watched them all up to series 7 recently (couldn't bear to see series 8 again).

I found it was really hit and miss. Some episodes were sublime, combining sci fi ideas to create situations that had the same tone and pathos as traditional sitcoms, but others were truly dreadful, with the characters just siting around making contrived jokes.

I suppose it's hard to maintain quality over such a period of time. These days I prefer the earlier series.

Did you watch Series X? Hit and miss but at its best it really harked back to the good old days.

Series I was good but very much finding its feet - II was a huge improvement in terms of scripting, and III was an improvement in terms of everything else. I loved it up to VII - much underrated, in my opinion - but VIII and IX are going to get a battering when I reach them.

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Geek. Skinny white guy. Older than he looks. Younger than he feels. Nervous stomach. Courageous toes. Bisexual atheist. Loves Doctor Who too much. Reads a lot. Watches a lot of DVDs. Keeps the flame burning for VHS. Loves to travel, but hasn't the money. Likes to write about what he likes. Often wears a hat.